MOVIEMAKER.COM 31BOTTOM: PHOTO BY MERIE WEISMILLER WALLACE / FOCUS FEATURES
She hired production designer Michael
Perry, a veteran of both It Follows and the TV
show Sweet Valley High, to create a vibrant,
cheery American setting that conceals ter-
rible secrets. His team built sets that look
so delicious you want to eat them. She also
recruited costume designer Nancy Steiner,
known for The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Trans-
lation, and Showtime’s Twin Peaks, and told
her she wanted Mulligan’s look to be “soft
and approachable” despite the trauma her
character is dealing with.
“The thing about women often who are
in kind of distress, or whatever it is, is theydon’t wear sweatpants. They dress up. They
put on lipstick.”
Her script doesn’t overexplain or lecture.
Fennell trusts her audience.
“I wanted to leave a lot of the stuff un-
said, because I think every person—I think,
I hope—who watches it implicitly under-
stands what’s happened.”
Fennell was inspired by, among others,
Alfred Hitchcock and some of the female
authors whose work he adapted,
including Strangers on a Train author
Patricia Highsmith.
When Mulligan got Fennell’s script, she
says, she felt “such a massive mixture of fas-
cinated, thrilled—it’s so exciting to read good
writing. Like I can’t tell you how exciting it is.”
Mulligan is careful about the roles she
chooses: “In probably the last 10 years
I haven’t done something unless I couldn’t
bear the idea of anyone else doing it,”
she said. She said doing Promising Young
Woman was a no-brainer.
The film comes from Lucky Chap
Productions, founded by Margot Robbie,
Tom Ackerley, Josey McNamara, and
Sophia Kerr in 2014. The company is focusedSPRING 2020on female-fronted films, as you may remem-
ber from the last issue of MovieMaker.
Some people in Hollywood misguidedly
talk about working with female filmmakers
as if they’re performing some noble civic
duty. But Mulligan has a savvier reason.
She notes that female-led films have a form
of built-in quality control.
“I’ve worked with female theater direc-
tors and filmmakers sort of the whole way
through my career. They’ve always been
brilliant experiences,” she said. “I always
know when I’m getting a script that’s being
directed by a woman that it’s something
to get excited about, because you can guar-
antee they’ve had to work eight times hard-
er to get to the point where they’ve got
a script that’s going out to actors.”
One of Mulligan’s favorite things about
Promising Young Woman is that as aestheti-
cally intoxicating as the film is, its beauty
doesn’t distract from its story. Mulligan says
people often ask her about her clothes in
movies, as if she’s playing dress-up for fun,
instead of giving life to a character.
“Do you know what’s so delightful?” she
asks. “I usually get asked a lot, Wasn’t it fun
to wear that outfit? ... Because people like
the film, and have so many questions about
it, we’ve had so few silly questions.” MMMovie release dates are in flux lately, so please
check MovieMaker.com for updates on when
Promising Young Woman will be released.CAREY MULLIGAN STARS AS CASSANDRA IN DIRECTOR
EMERALD FENNELL’S PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN,
A FOCUS FEATURES RELEASE.
(L TO R) DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
BENJAMIN KRACUN, WRITER/ DIRECTOR
EMERALD FENNELL, ACTOR SAM RICHARDSON,
AND ACTOR CAREY MULLIGAN.